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For Amisai Arevalo, the son of a fishing family and an advocate for the fishers of Chunox, a small village that sits along a turbid coastal lagoon in northern Belize, the impacts of the Belize Blue Bonds project launched in 2021 are personal. The families in his community rely on a healthy ocean for their livelihoods. Along with others across Belize, they are playing an important role in protecting it and informing decisions about the future.

“The ocean for me, it’s very important,” says Arevalo. “As a fishing community, a coastal community and a coastal country, it’s very important.…All the economy that surrounds the village and all the economy that is in the village depends on the sea.”

The Belize Blue Bonds for Ocean Conservation project was the largest debt convers...

Scientists say different species of shark are becoming more common in southern waters because of the rise in water temperature. Bryce Stewart of the Plymouth-based marine research charity Marine Biological Association said some species were moving north into warmer waters around the Channel Islands and the South West because their prey was doing the same. Lifeguards asked people to leave the sea after a 10 to 12ft (3 to 3.36m) long, dark grey shark was seen off a beach in Jersey on Saturday.

Alex Plaster, from Jersey’s marine resources team, said there had been “rare sightings of the larger sharks like shortfin mako, porbeagle and blue sharks” in the waters off the Channel Islands but the chance of anyone being bitten or attacked by a shark “was effectively zero”.

On Friday six First Nations established a new Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area on B.C.’s Central Coast. The area is larger than Prince Edward Island and will be protected under Indigenous law. At the same time, the nations signed an agreement with the provincial and federal governments protecting the area as a national marine conservation area reserve. The area will be known as Mia-yaltwa Ha’lidzogm hoon, pronounced “Me-ah-yall-twa Ha-lee-joh-gom hOH-own,” meaning “Realm of the Salmon, Home of the Salmon.” It will cover 6,700 square kilometres of B.C.’s Central Coast. 

“This is the first time, at least in the last 150 years, where our people have a formal say in marine managem...

The discovery of thousands of previously unchartered coral reefs could reinforce conservation efforts in northern Australian waters, say researchers. Scientists in Australia have mapped more than 1,000 previously unchartered coral reefs in northern Australia. And the lead scientist was inspired by satellite technology, such as Google Earth, more than a decade ago. 

When Google Earth started being widely used, many people used it to get a bird’s-eye view of their home or local neighbourhood. But Eric Lawrey wanted to see something else from the skies.

Lawrey, who is project manager at the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS)’s eAtlas, wasn’t fussed about spying on his own home from above. He was using the technology to peek at the coastline of northern Australia...

A research project led by AIMS which explores how fish and sound may benefit coral reef recovery has completed in-field experiments at east and west coast coral reefs. Researchers working on the Reef Song project are continuing to analyse data and publish their work in scientific journals. The team were in Coral Bay, Western Australia, recently to collect final data from the 60 patch reefs built at Ningaloo Reef by AIMS scientists in 2021, and share initial findings from the project with the local community. The scientists also decommissioned another 60 experimental reefs at Lizard Island in the Great Barrier Reef late in 2025. 

Harnessing the relationships between fish and corals

Dr Rohan Brooker, an AIMS fish ecologist who leads Reef Song, said the project is helping scienti...

In 2022, a Russian whale researcher made a startling discovery on Bering Island off Russia’s Pacific coast: a severed killer whale fin marked with the teeth of another killer whale. Two years later, it happened again, just two kilometres from the original find. 

The evidence initially pointed to a whale on whale event, suggesting that killer whales engage in cannibalism. But on closer observation of the killer whales’ social groups, researchers discovered they were witnessing an evolutionary process in motion.

Bering Island is home to groups of resident killer whales that feed on fish and are characterised by their exceptionally strong family structure. Each family is led by a female and may include up to four generations of descendants...

The opening weeks of 2026 are already redefining what is possible for ocean protection. On 17 January, the High Seas Treaty entered into force, ending an era in which nearly half of the planet’s surface lay beyond meaningful collective governance. The shared ocean beyond national jurisdiction is home to some of the planet’s most important and least understood ecosystems. From immense oceanic ridges to deep sea corals and undiscovered species, high seas biodiversity is silently maintaining the balance of our planet. But until now, the high seas were a regulatory wild west and largely beyond the reach of meaningful environmental protection.

Entry into force changes that reality. For the first time, the global community has a legal framework to protect biodiversity in these waters...

Tropical coral reefs cover less than 1% of the seafloor, yet support 25% of all marine species. They are also incredibly vulnerable. Over the past few decades, an estimated 30%-50% have already been lost. Yet we are approaching a terrifying threshold. After record-breaking ocean heatwaves of 2023-24, which saw coral “bleaching” in at least 83 countries, scientists are looking towards 2026 with growing dread.

The question is whether this will be the year a global tipping point is reached for warm-water coral – a point beyond which their fate is sealed, and even the most resilient species can no longer recover.

The fate of these ecosystems may hinge on events in the Pacific Ocean, in particular a natural climate cycle called the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO)...

One of the largest artificial reefs in the world has been installed at a wind farm off the Sussex coast. The project at the Rampion Offshore Wind Farm is the first of its kind, with 75,000 specially designed “reef cubes” placed at the bottom of a single turbine. It is part of a nature-inclusive design project, with the cubes helping to protect the turbine from erosion while also serving as a home for a wide range of marine life.

Helen Elphick, an innovations partner at RWE, the company that operates Rampion, said it was exciting to be involved in a trial which was a “sustainable win-win”.

The reef cubes have been designed with a chamber in the middle and a honeycomb texture on the outside to encourage marine life to use them.

Samuel Hickling, the chief scientific officer at ARC...

A global agreement designed to protect the world’s oceans and reverse damage to marine life is set to become international law. The High Seas Treaty received its 60th ratification by Morocco on Friday, meaning that it will now take effect from January. The deal, which has been two decades in the making, will pave the way for international waters to be placed into marine protected areas.

Environmentalists heralded the milestone as a “monumental achievement” and evidence that countries can work together for environmental protection.

“Covering more than two-thirds of the ocean, the agreement sets binding rules to conserve and sustainably use marine biodiversity,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said.

Decades of overfishing, pollution from shipping and warming ocea...